


Breaking Up is Harder in Real Life

by GrumpyJenn



Category: Selfie (TV)
Genre: Breaking up is hard to do, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 04:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2607737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyJenn/pseuds/GrumpyJenn





	1. Henry and Julia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [screamnuggets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamnuggets/gifts).



“I am sorry, Henry,” Julia said in her precise way, “but I cannot see you anymore on a romantic-social level.”

_What? But I thought…_

“You see, there are several problems with our relationship that I cannot resolve, and you are apparently unready to face. One: You seem uncomfortable with my extensive knowledge of the male reproduc…” Julia kept talking, but Henry didn’t hear a word of it after that. His mind was too busy going in circles, wondering what he had done wrong.

Henry didn’t hear a word of it, until he heard Eliza’s name, and he put up one hand to stop Julia. “Let me get this straight. This is about _Eliza_? What did she do this time? Because I thought you said you didn’t have a problem with our friendship, that you had cohorts of male friends…” But he couldn’t go on, because Julia was looking at him with something very like patient exasperation, almost pity.

“You have unresolved issues with and feelings for Eliza, according to all evidence, including the fact that you jumped to the conclusion that she had done something wrong,” Julia said in the gentlest tone he had ever heard from her. “And that is not the only reason I am dissolving our romantic relationship; your complex relationship with your ginger giraffe is only the largest of them. Literally.”

But Henry did not hear her, because he was packing up the few meager possessions he had left at her place, a toothbrush and a razor, really. _Look at how little of me she has really let into her life_ , he thought bitterly.

 _It was just that it was so out of the blue_ , he thought as he arrived at work early the next morning. _No matter what she says, Eliza must have done_ something _, because Julia is entirely too rational to just… just_ dump _me with no warning otherwise._

So when Eliza bounced in twenty minutes late, cheerfully throwing him a _Good morning, Henry! How are yooouu?_ he was already primed for a fight.

“Why would _you_ care?” He nearly snarled it at her, but she didn’t seem to notice his tone. She just did that stupid pouty face at him, the one she thought was sexy, and patted him on the cheek. He jerked his head away.

“Aww, did Henry get out of the wrong side of bed this morning?” _God, that stupid baby-talk voice!_ “What happened, did you not get lucky with your Julia-Wulia last night?”

“Shut up, Eliza!” _Well,_ that _got her attention_ , he thought. “No, really, why would you care that she broke up with me, with no warning? Right, you wouldn’t care, would you? Of all the stupid, _shallow_ —“

Shit, she looked like he had hit her, all shocked and even paler than usual. He watched her swallow hard and gather what dignity she could around her. “I’m sorry, Henry. I know you liked her a lot.” She reached out as though to take his hand but he couldn’t help himself, the guilt at hurting her overridden by anger at himself and at Julia and at the whole world.

He pulled away.

“How would you know?” he asked her tiredly. “It’s not like you’ve ever had a lasting relationship in your life.”

She swallowed hard again. “I thought I had one with _you_ ,” she whispered, and fled.


	2. Eliza and Freddy

_Freddy?_

_‘Sup?_

_My plc 2nite, hotnheavy?_

_Sure!_

Eliza laid herself back on the bed beside Freddy, and wondered why she didn’t feel better.

She had expected to feel better; she always did after sex.

But she didn’t this time, and she wondered why.

 _No_ , she thought _. I know why._ But she didn’t want to think about Henry right now, and how she had invited Freddy over to have sex so she didn’t _have_ to think about Henry. Because thinking about Henry and the way he had just… _attacked_ her, it made her want to cry. She had thought Henry was starting to understand that she _wasn’t_ a slut or a lost cause or a mistake in his weekend, and… and dammit, she was thinking about Henry!

So she decided to think about Freddy instead, and she grabbed her phone off the bedside table, checked her calendar. “Friday?”

“Can’t, babes,” Freddy said in his casual way. “Got a hot date.”

 _A what? A hot date? Oh, he’s probably joking, he has to go to his parents’ place or something_. But Eliza started to feel a sinking in her middle, and she wasn’t _sure_.

“A what?” Eliza said it teasingly, but to her it sounded like her own words were coming from a long way away. Hollow, kind of.

“A hot date. Hey! Don’t look like that. You didn’t think this was an exclusive sort of thing, you and me, did you? Come on. Just good times in bed, right?” He nudged her with a friendly elbow. “Gotta stay in the dating pool, you know, just in case.”

“Just in case.” Eliza felt numb. “Just in case what? In case you meet a girl good enough to take home to mother?” He was holding his hands out now, as though to fend her off, but still joking, like he didn’t think this was _important_.

He probably never had. Never thought _she_ was important.

“Get out,” Eliza said, almost conversationally. “Get out of my house.”

“What gives, Eliza? We both knew going in this was just casual sex, right?” He started to pull on his jeans.

“Yes. Yes, we did. But you know what?” Eliza shoved one arm into her bathrobe, then stood up and finished the job, tying it around her waist. “Casual sex or not, that doesn’t give you the right to... to use me for sex and then just… you know what? Just get _out_!”

“The using someone for sex was mutual, babes.” He was spitting mad now, and shouting as loudly as she was. He yanked open the door, glared at Henry standing there with his first poised to knock, and shouldered past him. “Good luck, Henry, I mean it, man. She’s a real piece of work!”

“So are you!” Eliza shouted it, and then sank down on the couch. She looked up at Henry standing there awkwardly with his hand still in the air to knock on the door, and she sighed. _Great, just what I need. My friend who doesn’t care anymore and my… my… whatever he is slamming out of my place. Terrific._ She sighed again. Maybe if she was rude enough Henry would just go away so this awful day could be over.

“What the hell do _you_ want?”


	3. Eliza and Henry

“I want to apologize,” Henry said simply, and when Eliza didn’t move or say anything, he ventured into the room. “May I?” He gestured toward the other end of the couch where she sat slumped and looking absolutely miserable.

Eliza didn’t move, just looked at him, but Henry sat anyway. “Are you okay?”

“Why would you care?” She said it tiredly, numbly, and _not_ in the nasty tone he had done earlier in the day.  Henry swallowed hard around the lump that suddenly appeared in his throat. _Dammit_ , he thought, _why can’t a woman be more like a man? Now I have to walk through a minefield to make her understand I didn’t mean to hurt her, I…_

“Because you’re my friend,” Henry admitted. “And I don’t like to see you hurt, even – _especially_ – when I’m the one who hurt you.”

“You think I’m stupid. And shallow and a slut.” _God, her voice still sounds numb, what the hell did Freddy do to her to finish off what I started?_

“I don’t think you’re a slut. Sluts don’t get their hearts broken by men like Freddy walking; they just go on to the next guy.” _Okay, so I’m guessing that’s what happened here tonight._ “And I never, _ever_ thought you were stupid.”

“Just shallow, then?” Eliza said, and there was more life in her voice now; she sniffled and wiped her eyes with the tail end of her robe’s sash.

“Not really.” Henry reached out to take her hand, and she flinched, staring at his hand like it was a snake ready to bite. “What’s wrong, Eliza?”

“Y-you don’t like touching people for no reason.”

 _And that’s how I know you’re not s shallow as you appear,_ Henry thought, _because you remember things like that_. “I think hugging a friend is a very, very good reason.” And he held out his arms.

Eliza, being Eliza, launched herself at him, half in his lap and half on the couch, and buried her face in his chest.

And Henry, being Henry, chose to do nothing about the sudden rush of feeling in his chest and… elsewhere. Not yet anyway.

 

~~~~~~~

 

“You want to tell me what happened tonight?” Henry’s voice rumbled against Eliza’s ear and she shook her head against his chest.

“He didn’t do anything. He just… casual sex doesn’t mean you just go off and date whoever and come back and sleep with your casual sex partner. Does it?”

Henry paused, and Eliza knew he was considering how to put this without outright saying _I told you so,_ or _Freddy is a tool_.   “It shouldn’t,” he said finally. “At the very least, if you’re having sex with someone, no matter how casual, you should consider their feelings.” She nodded against his chest.

His arms tightened around her shoulders, and Eliza snuggled in deeper. She felt safe and warm and cared for in a way Freddy had never made her feel, and she wanted – part of her wanted – to seduce Henry right then and there.

She was pretty sure she could, it wouldn’t be difficult, as close as they were. But part of her reveled in the feeling of being cuddled and held, by someone who saw her as more than a sex partner. By a friend.

So Eliza Dooley did something she had never ever done before in her whole adult life. She denied herself sex as comfort at least for the time being, and just relaxed into Henry’s arms, listening to the comforting beat of his heart under her ear.

And eventually, they both slept.


End file.
